City Council politicizes city clerk appointment

No big surprise. The City Council, thwarted at picking one former city councilor as city clerk, has picked another councilor over a candidate who had far more experience.

Not only did the council vote 9-2 to pay former City Councilor Dennis Farias the highest salary possible for the clerk’s job ($79,000), one councilor, Naomi Carney, actually described the city clerk position as part of the council’s “cabinet” and said no search should have been conducted at all.

That’s not surprising coming from Carney, herself a political appointee in the sheriff’s department. But her fundamental lack of understanding that the city clerk keeps records for all the citizens of New Bedford and not just the council is astonishing.

An argument could be made the position of “clerk of the council” is part of the City Council’s cabinet. (The clerk of the council keeps the City Council records while the city clerk keeps records for the whole city (birth, marriage, death certificates etc.) But the City Council has unwisely placed the city’s chief record keeper (city clerk) as the supervisor of both the clerk of the council and the clerk of committees jobs, mixing an administrative job with political ones.

The appointment as city clerk of former Councilor Dennis Farias, like the initially presumptive appointment of former Councilor Denis Lawrence Jr. before him, has nothing to do with whether Farias or Lawrence are good men or competent. They are both good men and they are both competent. It has to do with all members of the public having an equal shot at the city clerk job and it has to do with the taxpayers of New Bedford deserving to have the best candidate available hired.

From that standpoint, both Carver Assistant Town Clerk Elizabeth Nichols and Assistant City Clerk Stephanie Macomber of New Bedford would have been more qualified than either Farias or Lawrence for the city clerk job. You can argue that Farias and Lawrence’s experience as councilors makes them qualified to be clerk of the council, but certainly not city clerk. One would find it hard to imagine, however, either man pursuing the clerk of the council job which is largely secretarial and lower paid.

It’s especially disappointing to see Dennis Farias pursue a job he certainly knew he would be overwhelmingly favored for. Farias, when he first was elected to the council in 1999 was a reformer, a man who was skeptical of government and using political connections to win jobs.

It’s also disappointing to see Councilor Linda Morad, who can’t seem to find anything she likes about Mayor Jon Mitchell (who as a great shock to her defeated her for mayor in 2011) castigate Mitchell for calling for a professional search process for the city clerk job.

While Morad makes a more than legitimate point that the professional jobs of managing director of the Wind Energy Center and Economic Development Council should have involved searches, the fact is that Matt Morrissey and Derek Santos (who won those jobs) had direct experience in those positions and would have been the overwhelming favorites.

So Morad’s former campaign manager is now installed as city clerk, probably for 25 or 30 years, and one has to wonder who scared away Stephanie Macomber, who would have run the clerk’s office like the whiz she is, from even applying.

The City Council, as we’ve seen with the state Legislature and the Probation Department scandal, doesn’t get it when it comes to patronage. But the days of “winner take all” are no longer as acceptable to the public as they once were. In a country where private sector jobs are scarce, doling out government jobs to one’s friends is increasingly unacceptable.

Ask former City Councilor John Saunders. But ask him quick before the likeable good ol’ boy gets elected to the sleepy but well-paid job of county commissioner he is seeking since losing his council seat last year.

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Blog Author

Jack Spillane

Jack Spillane is the executive news editor of The Standard-Times and southcoasttoday.com and a political and human interest columnist for the paper.
Jack holds a master's degree in mass communication from Emerson College and has been a ... Read Full